Development of nanosilver embedded injectable liquid crystalline hydrogel from alginate and chitosan for potent antibacterial and anticancer applications

Injectable hydrogels with macroscopic ordering have gained special attention in drug delivery due to their excellent biocompatibility and minimally invasive surgical procedure. Nanosilver embedded Schiff base hydrogel from biopolymers alginate and chitosan was developed and demonstrated its application in the injectable delivery of anticancer drug Dox.HCl. The ordered hydrogel structure was evidenced by FT-IR, DLS, XRD and Rheology. The self-assembled morphology of nanosilver- Schiff base hydrogels was studied by microscopic techniques such as SEM, TEM and AFM. The pH dependent anticancer activity of the hydrogel was demonstrated by invitro drug release studies at pH 5.5 and 86.56 % release was obtained for 100 mgL-1 of Dox.HCl loaded hydrogel at 72 hours. The antibacterial activity attained from nanosilver can be assessed by Agar well diffusion assay and minimum inhibitory concentration and minimum biocidal concentrations were determined as 62.5 μL/mL and 125 μL/mL, respectively. The invitro cell viability studies were done against skin cancer cell B16 by MTT assay which shows 34.82 % of toxicity towards B16 cancer cells and the cell death was further confirmed by Apoptosis assay and flow cytometry. The developed macroscopically ordered liquid crystalline hydrogel can be act as a versatile platform for injectable drug delivery system.